Jan: A Dog and a Romance

by A. J. Dawson

THE END OF JAN'S LONE TRAIL

With every stride in his solitary progress along that dark trail Jan's gait and appearance took on more of certitude and of swift concentration upon an increasingly clear and definite objective.

Of the wolves in the neighborhood all save two remained, uneasily ranging the neighborhood of the trail to the rear of Willis's camp. As it seemed to them, Jim Willis's outfit was a sure and safe quarry. It represented meat which must, in due course, become food for them. And so they did not wish to leave it behind them, in a country bare of game.

Two venturesome speculators from the pack had, however, worked round to the front, one on either side of the trail. And these were now loping silent along, each sixty or seventy yards away, watching Jan. Jan was conscious of their presence, as one is conscious of the proximity of mosquitoes. He regarded their presence neither more nor less seriously than this. But he did not forget them. Now and again one or other of them would close in to, perhaps, twenty or thirty paces in a sweeping curve. Then Jan's lip would writhe and rise on the side nearest the encroaching wolf, and a long, bitter snarl of warning would escape him.

"If I hadn't got important business in hand, I'd stop and flay you for your insolence," his snarl said. "I'll do it now, if you're not careful. Sheer off!"

And each time the wolf sheered off, in a sweeping curve, still keeping the lone hound under careful observation.

Wolves are very acute judges; desperate fighters for their lives and when driven by hunger, but at no time really brave. If Jan had fallen by the way, these two would have been into him like knives. While he ran, exhibiting his fine powers, and snarled, showing his fearlessness, no two wolves would tackle him, and even the full pack would likely have trailed him for miles before venturing an attack.

But, however that might be, it is a fact that Jan spared no more than the most occasional odd ends of thought for these two silent, slinking watchers of his trail. His active mind was concentrated upon quite other matters, and was becoming more and more set and concentrated, more absorbingly preoccupied with every minute of his progress.

A bloodhound judge who had watched Jan now would have known that he no longer sniffed the trail, as he ran, for guidance. The trail was too fresh for that. He could have followed it with his nose held high in the air. It was for the sheer joy it brought him that he ran now with low-hanging flews, drinking in the scent he followed. And because of the warmth of the trail, Jan followed it at the gallop, his great frame well extended to every stride.

Of a sudden he checked. It was exactly as though he had run his head into a noose on the end of a snare line made fast to one of the darkling trees which skirted his path on the right-hand side. Here the scent which he followed left the trail almost at right angles, turning into the wood.